


When Love Comes Close

by pricklypaula



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Briefly mentioned warfare, Immortality, Implied torture (no explicit details), Implied unhealthy relationship dynamics, Jack wishing he was a falling star, M/M, People dying (and then not dying!) (nothing explicit), Religious Themes, Time Travel, deals with elder gods, very brief mention of attempted suicide (no explicit details)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-03-17 10:44:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13657392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pricklypaula/pseuds/pricklypaula
Summary: Jack, an immortal wishing for death, meets Eric, a time traveler wishing for life. Their romance transcends time with their histories as the backdrop as they struggle to come to terms with the building blocks of their existences.Or, Jack would really like to grow old someday while Eric would really like to stop randomly popping in and out of the future. Luckily, they find each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based off a prompt seen on Tumblr-- an immortal meets a time traveler and helps them become familiar with the new time they're in as they travel.
> 
> Complete -- will update regularly. Also unbeta'd. Hit me up if you're willing to do some editing!

The first time Jack saw him was during the war. There had been many wars before this one and Jack knew there would be many more after, but this one was the one where he saw hope and death twisted into the flesh of a man. But instead of dying in the field of graves, he appeared in a blaze of gold as if sent from heaven, wide brown eyes full of a childish belief in love not yet lost. Men stopped screaming as if the pain of life has faded into a blissful chance at survival, the empty clang of metal on flesh paused, and they all stared in an eerie silence as the graves they were creating for themselves filled with light. What appeared to them as an angel stared back, but as soon as he appeared, the blaze stole him away.

Sound rushed back, and the music of death came with it, echoing over the red earth as if there had never been gold. Jack’s men called their visitor the Angel of Light and whispered that God still loved them late at night when all else seemed dark. Sometimes Jack agreed with them, and sometimes he thought that no benevolent God would allow such light to encroach on the world’s shadow.

Jack’s side won the war but lost lives, hope, and faith. One man, Jack’s soldier who fought by his side, was dying when he grabbed Jack with fever shaking fingers. 

“I’ve seen the Angel of Light before.” He whispered, his hand hot and damp on Jack’s. “Does this mean I am awaited?”

Jack knelt by his sick bed, knowing that he wouldn’t make it through the night. If he had seen less years, he would’ve grieved this unnecessary loss of brilliance in the world, but instead he grimly accepted the truth. “Of course you’re awaited. The gates are open for you, my friend.”

“The Angel will take me there, brother.” His hand dropped away like a feather, breath rattling like a call to God to spare the man his agony. Jack watched his eyes become glassy and unseeing. Then, he rose, closed his soldier’s eyes, and called for the nurse to take him away.

The second time Jack saw him, he was an ordinary man. He was across the market, as golden as before but weighed down by something Jack couldn’t recognize. Jack was a scribe then, as he knew many languages and had spent his time learning more since. When he looked down at his notes and looked back up again, the man was gone. The Angel of Light was still whispered about, the light of his arrival now said to have finished the war, as no man could take a life after witnessing such pure love. But Jack had taken many lives and each decade had become bitterer that his remained constant.

He remember his soldier’s words, that the angel had appeared before, but he let it go. After so much time wandering, he had heard all kinds of stories. Stories had their own power. There were many about Jack himself, the observer who arrived and left silently, his touch on the world almost nonexistent except for where it mattered. 

But Jack kept seeing him as the years went by like leaves in the wind. He wondered if the he was like him, cursed to exist forever on a world that cared for no one. If he was also alone and watching his families waste away generation after generation. If he too wished for death underneath the starry sky and it never found him. They never met, but Jack felt like he had known him his whole life.

Then, he stopped seeing him for a long time. Years went by, the story of the angel lost to history, and Jack too began to forget him. The world changed, making it harder for Jack to blend in as things changed and he didn’t. He met Kent Parson, a man who, like him, didn’t match the world he lived in. Kent knew too much for his youth and he saw through Jack as if he were glass. Together, they found the Zimmermanns, who took them in and made them their own. Bob and Alicia were the parents Jack had forgotten that he had once had. Jack and Kent never spoke about how they were out of their own times and instead took it as an unspoken truth.

One night, Kent found Jack sitting on the roof, watching the stars. Jack remembered a time when the stars were different, the constellations watching him were no longer the same, taunting the fact he had yet to change. In their cosmic existence they mocked him. 

“What are you doing out here?” Kent had asked him. Jack shrugged listlessly, as they were no answers to the questions he asked the night sky. He motioned for Kent to join him and then he clung to him, desperate, the loss of so many loves boiling his blood. He recognized his own obsessiveness and let it consume him.

“I saw an angel once.” He told Kent that night as stars shot across the sky and burned up in the atmosphere. Jack wished he was one of them. 

“I’m sure you’ve seen all kinds of things.” Kent wrapped his arms around Jack as if to ground him, to pin him down when his heart yearned to fly through the sky. “You’ve lived long enough to see the world reborn.”

Kent died. Jack held his hand as it happened, the cancer raging through Kent’s body, ruining him. 

“I’ll see you soon, Jack.” Kent whispered to him. The irony seemed overwhelming as Jack realized that there would be no later for him. He had sought death for his whole life and had never found it.

The funeral was held in the Zimmermann’s hometown. Kent had no family who would take care of him once he was gone, and Alicia viewed him as her son. Rain fell over the few that stood by the grave covered in marigolds and roses. He had always loved marigolds, something about them speaking to a history Jack didn’t know.

“Kent will come back, Jack.” Alicia told Jack as he cried the tears he had contained for the past one hundred years. “He, like you, is different. He always come back, just with a different face.”

Jack looked at her in slow realization. “You’ve known him before?”

She smiled at him. “Of course. That’s how he knew to bring you to us. We’ll be here for you, Jack, as long as we can be.”

Alicia told Jack the truth then, that she had an old man as her neighbor growing up. He had become like her grandfather and helped raise her. They played together, he taught her to read, and he went to every play she starred in. That old man, who died when Alicia was still just a child, was Kent. He died and was reborn like a phoenix, every time a man with a changing face. He had found her again as a teenager and her a famous adult, known around the world. She then took him in as her own child, just as he had once done for her.

And so it was. Bob and Alicia were young when they met, and they aged while Jack stayed as he had always been. They moved to protect Jack and he found comfort with them after a long life of loneliness. He forgot the angel and let his life move on. He tucked the past away and moved to the present. Late underneath the cloudy skies, when the stars were obscured by modernity, Jack ceased to curse the God who let him live on and on.

It was not until almost two decades later that Jack saw his angel again.


	2. Chapter 2

Suzanne Bittle once sat with her crying son and told him that he was special.

“What do you mean, mama?” He asked through his tears, his eyes wide and glossy with his despair.

“Someday, you will join your father.” She told him as she hugged him close. “You’re not mine to keep, my love.”

He clung to her in a way only a child could and stubbornly cried that he would never leave her. She didn’t tell him that he wouldn’t have a choice and he didn’t ask. He forgot her words as he grew older and his father never came home.

“My love,” she called her son on his thirteenth birthday, “you’ll travel backwards before you ever go forwards.” Eric Bittle looked at her with his wide brown eyes she loved so much and smiled with confusion.

“Mama? What do you mean?” He asked and she hugged him softly. Eric tucked himself into her arms, comforted.

“Just know that your mama will always love you. Time will never change that.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her cheek. She tightened her grip on him and he was gone in a flash of gold that rained down around her as the grief of angels that she had lost her husband and now her only son.

“May God protect you, baby.” She whispered. She never saw him again.

Eric appeared in a battlefield in a flash of gold. The arms of death wrapped around him, welcomed him, and then rejected him. All he saw was the burnt red earth and the blue eyes of a soldier that seemed too old on such a young man. Then, he was in a field of tall grass and the world tilted on its axis. He collapsed, gasping for air, as the world spun around him and the wind whistled through the grass. He felt himself being picked up and carried away by arms he didn’t know. It all became a blur as his eyes filled with tears and he curled into the chest holding him as if his father could still protect him from the world’s great unknowns.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been when he came back to himself. Eric opened his eyes to find himself in a barn, covered in a blanket, with animals watching over him. His fingers brushed a cat that was lounging beside him, sharing its warmth in the evening cool. Voices echoed from beyond the door and he shrank down, hoping to disappear amongst the animals and be forgotten. Instead, the door swung open, the long-loved wood polished smooth by the hands that had touched it.

A man looked down at him, his eyes warm and his cheeks red from laughter and the cold. His voice was deep and came from his belly, but Eric couldn’t understand him. The language that rolled off the stranger’s tongue sounded like nothing Eric had ever heard before. After a few moments of questions and Eric’s silence, the man sighed and pulled a yellowed paper from his pocket. He offered it to Eric and then shook it slightly when he didn’t move to take it.

“Thank you.” Eric croaked, “for saving my life.” He took the paper from the man’s calloused fingers and opened it. The handwriting came from hands he thought he’d never see again.

“Eric, my son, I am sorry for leaving your mother and you. Suzanne and I both knew the day would come and we dreaded it together. We never wanted you to feel the grief we did, so we didn’t tell you. But, my son, you carry the weight that I do. I know now that you too shall travel through time without control and that you too shall spin through society without having a place there. I know this because I saw you, Eric, in a time far ahead of where I thought you’d stay. Suzanne suspected it, for she is far more thoughtful than I. I never wished this for you, Eric, I hope you know that in your heart. You will need to be brave. You could go a day, or a thousand days, to anywhere in the world. Good luck, my son. Your mother and I are so proud of the man you are.”

Eric looked up at the man in front of him, his eyes full of tears. The man looked back down at him with a calm face and motioned for Eric to follow him. He became the first of many families that Eric would have as he traveled. The barn and its animals, the cat that Eric curled up with at night, and the man who became his guide, were the second family Eric lost.

He never wondered if there were people like him. His father was out there in the sea of time somewhere and he knew that they would cross paths someday in the future. Eric’s sole focus became survival and adaptability, as every new time came with new challenges. There was not always a family that would take him in and give him a home. As the years passed by in a blur of fear, languages, culture, and loss, Eric grew lonelier.

Sometimes, he looked up at the sky and wondered if he had truly seen the same old blue eyes on the same man more than once. He wondered if that man had seen the darkness inside men and if he had been touched by it. Eric’s fingers ran over his scars, wondering if science would ever explain his life.

He wondered if someday, he’d face the God his mother had spoken to him about and confront all the sins of humanity.

"My grandmother told me about you." A little girl told him when he appeared in a forest of redwoods that stretched far above him into the sky. "She said that she had a son who left her in a ray of sunshine and here you are! In a ray of sunshine! Are you my uncle then?"

Eric looked at the child in awe. Her eyes looked back at him, the same as the woman he had called his adopted mother just moments ago. She had died, her granddaughter told him, in the previous year. Her life had been long and full of love, but age caught up to her in the end. She had spoken at length about Eric to her granddaughter and had told her all of the stories he had once shared.

“How long will you stay with me, Uncle?” She asked him as she tugged him towards the door of an old house leaning wearily amongst the trees.

“As long as I can.” He said. But that evening, he felt the pull as he kissed her goodnight. In a rain of gold, he was gone again.

Eric learned languages and forgot them, but he never forgot those who watched over him. In seven years of travel, he had learned to get by in fifteen languages across more than a hundred years of time. He had found his mother’s grave and wept for the time he had lost with the family that had given him life. His fingers traced the scrolling text of her name in a language he no longer spoke. It, like his history, had been murdered by time.

When he came to again, the redwoods had faded to the rolling sands of the beach. Twilight sparkled over the black water of the ocean and a man was walking towards him. Eric rolled to his knees, as weak as he always as after a long travel. He looked up into the blue eyes of a soldier he thought had died.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack found him on the beach where the sand gave away to stones. He was damp with sea spray and shivering, his muscles weak as if he had been lifting the weight of his life in his own hands. When he looked up at Jack, his eyes were a deep brown in the moonlight, his skin pale but gold, freckles dotted over his nose like constellations. The angel had returned.

“I thought you died.” The man whispered before fainting away in the sand. Jack knelt and lifted him, holding close to his heart where the songs written about him still lived. For a moment, he thought his unconscious burden was simply a figment of God’s humor, as he was as light as a feather, his bones fragile in Jack’s hands. But the warmth of his skin seeped through Jack’s shirt and into his chest and he knew they both were men living fantasy lives.

Bob and Alicia looked up when he came in from where they were curled on the couch. Their cabin was warm, the fire rolling in the fireplace, and dinner was finishing in the oven. Bob spoke first. 

“Who is that?” He rose from his seat, favoring his knee. Years of hockey had torn it up and with his sudden vertigo from one too many hard hits, Bob had begun to show his age. Jack, with his immortality, played as hard as he wished at no risk of injury. He had learned all he could from Bob and his friends in the NHL. Now, he learned on his own to avoid the public spotlight. He had already tried every way a man could die, yet he lived on.

Jack gently pulled a blanket from the couch and wrapped it around his charge. Color was slowly coming back to the soft cheeks of the man stories of a war angel had been written about. “This is the Angel of Light. I’ve seen him before over the years, sometimes for just a moment, and sometimes for longer. A soldier of mine had also seen him before and believed him to be sent by God.”

“You don’t believe in God.” Bob frowned as he peered into Jack’s arms where the young man was wrapped in blankets. Jack’s grip on him was strong and sure, as if he had once let him slip through his fingers and wouldn’t allow it again. 

“No. I don’t. He’s just a man, like us, like me. Like Kent, with his unnatural gift. But I know many songs in many languages about him.”

Alice rose, her grace still as present as it had been when Jack had met her when she was in her twenties. She wrapped an arm around Bob and peered down at their guest thoughtfully. 

“He’s awfully young for the life he’s been leading. I once thought Kent would be the strangest person in my life.” She shrugged and then smiled softly, watching her adopted son cling to the man in his arms. “Let him rest, Jack. You can stay with him until he wakes up and can make sure he’s safe.”

Jack agreed and took his small charge to the second bedroom where Jack was sleeping. He laid him down and tucked the blanket more closely around him before gently touching his cheek. Color had bloomed there and eye lashes whispered against golden skin. Time seemed frozen for a moment as Jack tried to remember all the details he could before time moved forward, taking away all the fine marks in Jack’s memory. Scars lined parts of the angel’s exposed skin and Jack’s fingers shook as he touched them lightly. Ridges, representing the years gone by.

“What is your name?” Jack wondered. “Where do you come from?” But the bundle on his bed offered no answers.

He got no answers until the next morning. The bundle on the bed woke him up as it moved and wrestled its way out from the blanket. Big brown eyes met Jack’s and they widened in recognition.

“It’s you.” Jack’s angel breathed. “I wasn’t sure if you were real.”

Jack smiled crookedly as he stretched his back. “I’m real.” He had never crossed paths with his angel, but he had always been looking for him. Familiar faces across the ages faded, but this man’s eyes seemed imprinted in Jack’s long memory.

“Where am I? What year is it?” The young man’s voice carried an accent older than any Jack had heard, but his cadence was confident even though it was out of date.

“You’re in Canada, at my family’s cabin. It’s 2008.” Jack told him. “My name is Jack. Who are you?”

“Eric.” Eric looked around and pulled his knees to his chest. “It’s really 2008? It was 1982 yesterday and I was in California.” He met Jack’s eyes again, searching them. “You don’t seem surprised to hear that.”

“No.”

“Why have I seen you before?”

So Jack told him. He started from the beginning, when Eric appeared in the battlefield to ease the hearts of dying men. Jack told him he wasn’t alone in a constantly changing world that he couldn’t keep up with as he travelled. Eric’s eyes grew wide and his let his mouth drop open as Jack talked about Kent. He suddenly leaped forward out of the bed and into Jack’s arms, his eyes full of tears. 

“I’m not alone.” He cried into Jack’s chest, his scarred skin shaking with the force of emotions he’d buried. “I’m not alone.”

“I’ll always find you, Eric.” Jack heard himself promise. “I won’t let you wander this world alone anymore. Promise me you’ll always look for me.”

“I will.” Eric sniffled. “I don’t know you, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”

Jack didn’t know how long they would get together before Eric travelled again. Time felt suspended as they held each other in the dawning light. When Alicia knocked on the door to fetch them for breakfast, Jack slowly pulled away. Eric gripped his shirt in white fingers as if he was afraid that Jack would be the one to disappear. But instead, Jack pulled him up and held his hand as he introduced them to his adopted parents. 

The fear of time choked them all, but Bob and Alicia welcomed Eric warmly. “You’re home, Eric.” They told him and Eric’s eyes welled with more tears. 

Eric clung to Jack from then on, barely ever leaving his side. They both recognized the unhealthy coping mechanisms that were rising between them, but neither acted to stop it. Jack felt the same obsessive devotion he once had for Kent rise again, filling his chest with a confusing jealousy for all the time Eric had spent without him. He wanted to grab Eric, and mark him in a way that would leave them both with permanent knowledge of who owned who.

But Eric was fragile, too much so to handle the obsession swarming inside Jack. He desperately wanted to take Eric, sweep him away from the hands of time that loomed, waiting to take away their blossoming love. They met when Eric was twenty and Jack lost him after six months. He spoke to no one for days after the golden blaze stole Eric from him, taking him somewhere Jack couldn’t follow.


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s 2010.” The doctor told Eric in the hospital as he shown a light into his eyes. “And you’re lucky that you’re just a little confused and not more injured.”

“I know. Thanks for making sure I’m okay, though. I promise to be more careful next time I cross the street.”

“That’s a good boy. Do you have someone you can call?” 

Eric looked thoughtful and then nodded. “I do. Could I borrow a phone?”

As he sat outside the hospital considering his next move, Eric wondered what had happened in the previous two years. It only felt like seconds to him, the changes in time passed in a single blink that left him disoriented and alone. The whole world moved on without him, the uncaring wearing of time eating away at the people he had once known. He looked up at the buildings around him and wondered how he had landed in South Africa. The doctor had been kind, worried that Eric had lost his family amongst the tourists crowding the streets in the city. 

Eric felt alone, but he knew Jack was already at the airport, boarding a flight to come take Eric home. He still had a family. There were people waiting for him. For the first time, he felt at peace with his travelling. South Africa seemed beautiful and he had a chance to explore before Jack arrived. 

But as soon as he stood to get started, he felt the pull deep inside his chest and he was fading. Desperately, he reached through the gold for Jack, but it was too late and Jack was too far away to hear the cry of his name.

From then on, they played a game of hide and seek through time. Eric always looked for Jack and Jack always found him, as long as Eric stayed long enough in one moment of time. The Zimmermanns grew older, Bob’s dark hair becoming gray and Alicia’s laugh lines deepening, but Jack stayed young and beautiful as the years passed. Eric himself grew older slowly, gradually becoming the man he hoped his parents would be proud of. 

He took Jack to his mother’s grave, the script of her name faded away into rough stone. Years of neglect echoed in her death, and Eric gently cleaned her grave with love. 

“She taught me to brave.” He told Jack as he gently etched her name back into the black stone. “She wanted to protect me.” He covered the dirt of her final resting place with small stones until she was hidden from the heavens who had taken her child. “I live for her, but sometimes I wish I could’ve died for her.”

One evening, under the stars, Jack admitted that he wanted to die. “I’m tired of living, Eric. I can’t remember my parents or if I had them. Sometimes I think I was created at the dawn of time.”

Eric threw himself into Jack’s arms. They were always open for him and Eric wondered if Jack ever resented Eric’s clinginess. But the arms drew him in and held him tightly as Jack tucked him against his broad chest. 

“Don’t ever say that!” Eric whispered into Jack’s neck. “I can’t bear a future without you in it.”

“I’ll always find you. I promised.”

And so it went. Eric came and went while Jack always stayed, searching, waiting. Sometimes it was a day and sometimes it was years. Alicia had grown old and gray. Bob had died years ago and his end had been hard. Hard for her, but harder for Jack, who had finally had a family for the past fifty years. He barely let Eric out of his sight when he found him again.

“Eric, it’s been a while.” Alicia brushed the lightest of kisses across his cheek. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me too.” He whispered, sitting at her bedside. “How long has it been?”

“Twenty years since I last saw you. I know Jack has seen you a few times, but your time was short for a while. Bob died six years ago. He asked me to give you his blessings. You are part of our family, forever, Eric.”

Eric bowed his head. He always cried when he resurfaced. Jack always held him through it until the turmoil receded. “Where will we be without you?”

“Just fine, sweetie. You’re going to be just fine.” But it didn’t feel fine. “I have one thing to ask of you. You and Jack, you should talk. All this dancing around each other makes me dizzy in my old age.”

Eric laughed through his tears and tucked her blanket more closely around her. “Get some sleep, Alicia. You will always be my dearest friend.” She reminded him of the man who laughed with his belly and his faithful barn cat that kept Eric warm late on snowy nights. He missed them all, everyone who had opened their homes to a stranger who spoke in a way far out of time.

Jack met him outside as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky brilliant shades of pink and purple. The colors brought back darker memories, of losing families and enduring pain that seemed like it’d never end. They watched them fade and for a moment grieved for all that faded with them.

That night, they came together at last. Eric reached for Jack and Jack stepped into the circle of his arms and let himself be pulled down into a kiss. His gripped Eric, tightening around him. 

“Eric,” Jack gasped, “we can’t do this.” He didn’t pull away. He never wanted to let him go.

“Yes, we can, Jack. I want you. God I want you.” They kissed for what felt like eternity and fire erupted between them, sucking them both down into a fall of emotions they couldn’t stop. Jack let his obsession rise and overwhelm him.

“Don’t ever leave me, Jack.” Eric gasped below him and Jack knew he was lost, a slave to his instincts that boiled underneath his skin.

Eric felt the pull. And Jack was showered in gold as blood was drawn, spattering like rose petals over heated flesh. Then he was alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack grieved and Alicia died. She knew that her adopted son’s relationship with the traveler had grown and they were so twisted together that they couldn’t tell where one ended and the other begun. She cherished them both until she passed away, her beloved child beside her. 

At her funeral on a spring day full of light and flowers, Kent found Jack again. He had brought wreaths of marigolds and quietly draped them over Alicia’s headstone. His eyes were the same grey green, but his face had changed as Alicia promised it would. He pressed a kiss to the stone and then rose to face Jack.

“It’s been a long time, Jack.”

“Fifty years, Kent. Where have you been? We needed you.” Jack felt a cold anger, but it froze his chest in the name of the unfairness of the world. In the end, he didn’t really care that Kent had taken his time. 

“Memories are fickle things.” Kent shrugged, tucking a baseball cap onto his head. “Sometimes they come back early in my life, sometimes they come back late. I’ve died before they’ve returned before.”

Jack hugged him, clinging to the human warmth he missed so much. Kent stepped back from him and touched the scar that peaked out from underneath his shirt. 

“I knew you’d move on from me.”  

“It’s complicated, Kent. He’s like us. Different and afraid.”

Kent snorted. “I’m not afraid. I have been raised a thousand ways to be brave. I have a life where I remember now and I have a cat. I missed my family, and I’m sorry for that. Alicia has been my daughter and my mother. She’s been my best friend across multiple lifetimes.” He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “I’m going to miss her so much.”

Jack let Kent cry in silence. He had seen so much death, had brought so much of it to the surface, that he felt empty at the thought of it. Kent experienced death again and again, yet it was the one experience Jack thought of at night. Eric burned through the heavens like a falling star, pulled back to earth by time but burning up in the heavens. Jack a comet of blue ice, never seemed to find his end.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Kent admitted. “I found a way, or someone, who can break your curse.”

There had been many late nights where Jack told Kent his fears, his weaknesses, and the crimes he had committed seeking the inevitable end that all around him faced. Each winter, as the cold bit his skin, he envied the death of everything and mourned their rebirth in the spring. Kent knew of his obsessions and of how, after a life that spanned the renewing of the world, he became consumed in his entirety. The scars Jack carried on his skin that came from emotions that wouldn’t fit inside.

“This can end?” Jack asked. “How? Kent! How!” He grabbed his friend and shook him in front of their mother’s grave. 

“Jack, I don’t know for sure. It’s an elder god, living as a woman at Samwell University. She offered to let my life end once and never return at a price.” 

There was no price too dear for Jack. Kent told him her name. Larissa Duan, an art student at Samwell who in reality was a god so old that no memories of it existed. Genderless, living amongst men as whoever and whatever it pleased. It’s true form was something that defied mortal minds to understand. Kent had found it by following the dwindling trail of those with melted eyes.

“I’ve never felt a power so great, Jack. Be careful.” He touched the scar on Jack’s chest. “Better find your boy first. He’ll want to know why. But you have my blessing.”

“Will I see you again?” Jack asked.

Kent laughed at him. “That’s up to you, my old friend.”

They parted ways, Kent to places unknown, and Jack south from his hometown to find a god that would end his life. Jack decided to walk down the miles that separated his life from its death. He wanted to see Eric one more time. But Eric never appeared, and no matter how he searched, Jack never heard of him.

It took him six months to walk, as he took stops along the way to visit those he once knew. They all asked him about his pilgrimage, and he would laugh lightly and say he was just searching for a new goal. At the end of every day, when the stars came out, he watched them fall and asked himself if he wanted to die. 

When he reached Samwell, he hadn’t seen Eric in ten years. Jack wished that after the long life he’d lived that a year would pass instantly, but still they dragged by. Even as he walked towards a dilapidated house slowly sinking into itself, he thought the seconds passed by slowly as if every minute without Eric was meant to torture him with its length.

The door opened as he stepped onto the sagging porch. “You’ve come to see me. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Jack looked into the dark eyes of a college student with paint smeared on her face. At first, he thought her eyes were brown, but the longer he stared, he could see all of space and time in them. The Milky Way washed across her iris and stars twinkled under her eyelids. 

“How did you know I was coming?”

“I’ve always known.” She shrugged her shoulder and opened the door for him. “Come in, you’re welcome here. We have a guest waiting for you.”

He stepped inside and found himself in a kitchen and Eric stood at the counter, sipping coffee as if he had lived there all his life. The creaking of the floor alerted him of Jack’s presence and he turned to look at him. The cup slipped from his fingers, spilling coffee over stained countertops. Jack opened his arms and Eric was in them as if he had never left.

“How are you here?” Jack asked him, holding him as tightly as he dared. 

Larissa answered. “He appeared here two weeks ago and he is unable to travel as long as he is in his house. It is my domain, the wood an extension of me, and he is tied to it for as long as he remains within.”

Jack looked down into Eric’s wet eyes. “You didn’t call me.”

“I wouldn’t let him. I knew you were coming and he needed to wait.”

The house rumbled around them and a voice echoed from the wood. “Guests?” Jack and Eric both looked at the walls in shock as a human face appeared. It pushed through the old wood, deforming it into a mask, the grooves forming a mustache that wiggled as it talked. “Welcome. Lardo, what to do with them?”

They turned to Lardo, the elder god with eyes as fathomless as space. “Shitty, it’s up to them. They can’t harm us here.”

The house shook as Shitty growled. “They can’t hurt us at all. Violence is a mortal act, and they are not normal mortals.”

“I have been watching you both because I knew you’d both come.” She waved her hand and the spilled coffee was gone, the mug full again and steaming. “Please, make yourself at home. You may call me Lardo. The spirit of the house is my partner, Shitty, they are an extension of myself and we are one.”

Shitty faded into the wall and Lardo studied them. “Go and talk. You have much to say.”

Eric pulled Jack up the unsteady stairs to a bedroom. The moment the door clicked closed, Eric was pressed into Jack as if there was no end to him. The years apart melted away and Jack buried his face in Eric’s hair, breathing in the scent of time not lost. 

“I was raised to believe in God.” Eric whispered into Jack’s chest. “My belief faltered as time went on, for who would allow their child to live my life? But for a long time, He was my only family.”

“I have never been sure.” Jack admitted. “But my men thought you were an angel and it brought them comfort in dark nights. Lardo is something I know nothing about. An unknown in a world of unknowns.”

“She said you were coming, but she wouldn’t say why.” Eric was crying, his arms shaking around Jack’s broad shoulders. “I was gone so long, I was afraid you’d forgotten me.”

“I promised I’d always find you. That I’d never stop searching.” 

“Our love leaves scars, Jack.” Eric pressed into him. “Leave some more.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lardo had found him on the porch of her aging house. She had lifted him back to his feet and studied his face for a long moment as he swayed. 

“I knew you were coming, Eric Bittle.” She supported him as he stumbled and pulled him into her home. “My name is Lardo and you’re welcome here. This is my domain and you will not travel as long as you’re within me.”

“Who are you?” He asked as he collapsed into a chair in her sagging kitchen. “Where am I?”

“Samwell University. I’m an art student.” She shrugged and waved her hand and a cup of tea appeared in his shaking grip. “Drink that, it will help. You’ve travelled far this time.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Some answers will only bring more questions. Simply know that I am far older than you know and that there is no end and no beginning.” She knocked on the wood of the kitchen wall and Eric blinked in confusion as face pushed through the grainy paint. “Shitty, Eric is our new guest. Please create a room for him upstairs, as he’ll be with us for a while.”

The face vanished and Eric put his head down on the table. At the time, he was too overwhelmed to know what would come. But when he opened his eyes to sunshine and hot breath on his neck, the dread that time always brought to him washed over him. Jack’s arm tightened around his middle and his body pressed down into Eric, grounding him.

“Sleep. Time can’t hurt us here.” 

“How did Lardo know we were coming?” Eric rolled inside the cage of Jack’s arms and waited for him to open his droopy eyes. 

“Kent told me that she’s an elder god.” Jack’s eyes fluttered closed and Eric reach up and ran his fingers over his skin. “Lardo belongs to a time long past.”

“You met Kent?”

“Yes. Alicia… She died.” Jack’s eyes opened and met Eric’s. Tears pooled in the brown eyes he had devoted his journey to Lardo to. He held Eric as he cried.

“I wanted to come back to see her again. Lardo said it had been over ten years since my last appearance and Jack, I am so afraid. Time just goes on without me and the world fades and I am here. My language, my history, are washed away.”

“The world waits for no one.” Jack held Eric closer and whispered in his ear. “Kent told me that Lardo can undo my curse.”

Eric felt his fingers dig into Jack’s flesh, mirroring bruises he had left there before. His own way of measuring time in the fading blues and purples. Time had taken all the things he loved and the scars on his skin were his permanent memories, trapping his passions on his flesh. 

“Lardo doesn’t do anything for free. There will be a cost.” 

“Kent told me. He didn’t take her up on it, but he didn’t mention what the cost would be, not for him, and not for me.”

“It will be too high.” Eric looked into Jack’s eyes with fear. “Don’t let her disguise deceive you, Lardo isn’t human. I’ve been here for weeks, Jack, and she knows more than she’d ever let on.”

“I have to try.”

“You don’t! Jack, she could kill you! She could kill us all, wipe this whole town from history with a wave of her hand!”

Silence fell and realization began to dawn for Eric. Ice rushed through his veins, tingling in his fingers, racing up his spine. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it. To die.”

Jack wouldn’t look at him. “Yes.”

Eric’s world began to crash down around him, the pieces tumbling to his feet like rubble in a fire. “Your life is not currency that you can pay her with!” He felt himself shaking and wondered if he’d finally shake apart.

“Time is my currency.” Jack still looked away. “I can live out the rest of a mortal life. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“I thought I was what you always wanted.” Eric realized how broken his voice sounded after the words fell out of his mouth, as shattered as he felt inside. He wanted to grab the marks on his skin and rip them off, throw away his love into the past and leave it behind. 

Jack’s silence told him all he needed to know and he pried his way from Jack’s hold. He stumbled blindly out of the room and made no sound as he caught himself on the door, tearing his shirt. Lardo looked up from where she was painting as he tumbled down the stairs and reached for the front door, deaf to her jumping to her feet and shouting.

The wood of the door warped and Shitty reach through, trapping Eric as he sobbed. He sank to his knees, wooden arms wrapped around his shoulders.

“Shh, little one.” Shitty cooed. “You’re going to be alright, just take breathe in and out.” Lardo stood off to the side, watching with her boundless, judging eyes. 

“God doesn’t want you to be happy, Eric Bittle. He wants you to be strong.” Lardo turned and sat back at her painting. Eric shuddered and opened his swollen eyes to watch her profile as she picked up her paintbrush and dipped it into a burning red that glowed like fire.

“Does God exist, Lardo?”

“Jack is coming. You still have much to talk about.”

“Is God real? Is He?” Eric realized he was screaming, his throat raw. “Why is He doing this to me?”

Lardo turned her head and for a moment Eric thought he saw the real being that was contained in the human flesh prison before him. Endless eyes that contained universes dying and falling into rolling fire, the desert sands that stretched forever in pristine tan, and every moment of time being eaten alive by something so great, Eric couldn’t compute it. His eyes felt like they were boiling in his skull and he collapsed into Shitty.

When he opened his eyes again, he was on the couch and Jack was sitting beside him with his head in his hands. Lardo was still painting and over her shoulder, Eric could see the canvas and realized her could see past the wet paint to the stars on her brush and the pain on her palette. He looked up at Jack and saw that he was crying glistening tears that rolled down his cheeks like rain.

“Jack?” He croaked, “what happened?”

“Never ask Lardo about God, little one.” Shitty’s voice came from the wall behind Eric and he flinched. “There is a history of the world that mortals will never know, and you must not tread where the sun doesn’t follow.”

Eric closed his eyes and agreed. “Somethings are not mine to understand.” He wasn’t sure who he spoke to, himself, Lardo as she painted agony is wet lines across innocent canvas, Shitty, or Jack, who stewed on whether he wanted to die. “I will do my best to understand.”

But all he wanted was to run outside and let time take him away from here, away from the pain, and away from Jack’s desire to taste death.


	7. Chapter 7

Eric was upstairs, asleep, and Jack sat across from Lardo. “You could’ve killed him.”

“It’s not his time yet.” She brushed black fringe away from her face and sipped on her tea. Jack couldn’t place the smell, but earlier Eric had exclaimed over it as if he had once known the flavors. “Why have you come here, Jack?”

“I need more time. Eric… We need to talk.” Lardo’s raised eyebrow pushed him to continue. “I want him to understand first.”

“You want more time after the centuries you’ve had?” She began to laugh and behind it Jack thought he could hear the sounds of space between the stars. “Maybe you should’ve spoken to him sooner, as you spoke to Kent.”

“What did you offer him? Kent?”

“I offered to end his life and not let his soul return. The details of the deal are not for you to know, they are for him and him alone.” Jack stuttered and said “wait-“, but she held up a single finger to stop him. “I know why you want to know, Jack. You want to know because it will tell you if you should ask me for your deal, even if it costs you Eric. You are selfish, willing to do whatever best benefits you.”

Lardo fell silent and watched him critically. Jack shivered in her gaze. “But, I like him. He’s a sweet soul lost in the crushing oceans of time. If he didn’t already carry your marks, I’d make him into one of my own. So, I will give you more time.” When Jack tried to speak, she raised her finger again to stop him. “Do not think me overly patient. This is for Eric, not for you. And don’t think that I can’t take him anyway, he’d make a wonderful god and Shitty would love a friend.”

Jack got up from the table and inclined his head in silent submission. “I will take this time. But I have one last question. Why did you hurt Eric if you desire to make him into something he isn’t?”

“It was a test.” She shrugged. “I owe you no answers. Now get out of my sight until you can ask things that don’t all come back to you.”

Jack left and joined Eric where he was curled up in the too big bed, only the top of his head poking out from the deep blue blankets. He seemed so small amongst the navy folds and Jack wondered if he’d still be so small in the folds of the world after Lardo took him. 

“I wanted to be a star that burned up in the sky.” He told Eric. “Blown away by cosmic power.”

“I know.” Eric’s eyes opened and their red rims reflected slivers of moonlight. “I believe that my mother is the sky, watching over me. I fear that she can’t see me when I’m inside these walls.” He rolled towards Jack and touched his hand. “Jack, I love you. In the chaos of these years, you have been my constant.”

“I’m sorry for all of this, Eric. I never wanted you to be hurt.”

“Time waits for no one,” Eric laughed, “not even me. But I need to understand. Why all this? Why now?”

Jack didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t this moment. It had been all along, his desire to see the final door of life had existed for as long as his memory went back. The sunshine of Eric in his memory highlighted the shadows of the things he had long forgotten. 

“It’s hard to explain. Eric, I need you to know that I love you. I carry your love on me, a permanent reminder that life is full of passion. But, I am immortal. I have lived forever and will continue to live as the trees wither and die, as the stars shift in the sky, as cultures change and languages are lost. I will have to watch everything and everyone around me die while I stay young. Change is the thing I most desire in all the world.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was consistency.” Eric admitted. “I guess someday I’ll be old and you’ll be young.”

“Time offers no constants unless you’re immortal and never change at all. Those little changes are what make people mortal, but I don’t have any. I want it so badly, Eric. So badly.”

“I know, but Jack… You aren’t thinking of anyone else this could impact. What about me? What about Kent?” 

“I have to do what’s right for me.” Jack flopped down onto his back, his hands behind his head. Eric scooted closer to him and tucked his arm underneath his head. “This is my chance to move on. To relearn what it means to be alive.”

“What will that mean for us?” Eric’s fingers slowly traced a scar on Jack’s hip. He had put it there.

“I don’t know.”

“I want to ask Lardo if she can stop my time travel, but I’m scared of what she’ll ask for. She and Shitty have made me feel at home here. I can’t feel the pull of time at all when I’m inside the walls. I guess I could stay here for the rest of my life.” Eric trailed off desolately. “But I want to be normal too. You aren’t the only one who wants something.”

“The world is made for wanting.”

“Jack… I can’t stop you from doing what you need to do. Or even want to do. I can’t imagine the suffering of your long life, but I don’t want you going into this thinking it’s just you.”

Jack was silent. He didn’t know how to tell Eric that in the end, it would be just Jack. Eric would grow older and Jack would stay the same through centuries of Eric’s travelling. He could scar his flesh and walk through the wind as it blew away all he knew, but death would never find him. The stars would mock him forever until the ground beneath his feet boiled away into stardust itself. If this was his only chance, he had to take it. The idea of the bleak future ahead of him, the years of waiting to age, of watching everything fade to ash on the careless breeze, he couldn’t do it. 

“This could be my only chance.” He could taste the sweet honey of hope on his tongue. It tasted like Eric. “I have to try. I don’t have to take a deal if the price is too high.”

Eric rolled away from him again, his narrow but strong shoulders shaking slightly. “There will be no price too high for you to pay. I know that now.” He sniffled. “I will also ask Lardo to end my travelling. There will be no place for me in this world without you in it.”

“I never thought there’d be a time where I wasn’t here. Change is within my grasp.” Jack waited for a response, but Eric said nothing. His shoulders continued to shake until his breathing softened back into sleep. He had curled up into a small bundle as if he wanted to be as he felt, just a small speck of dust disturbed by God walking through the world.


	8. Chapter 8

Eric took Jack’s hand the next day when they approached Lardo. Scabs chafed and stretched under his shirt where Jack had shown his love one last time. He still desperately wanted to run out the door and travel away, but he also felt sick with curiosity for what would come. He had to know, he desperately didn’t want to.

Lardo stood at the bottom of the stairs and Eric could see the twinkling stars deep in her eyes. “You’re right on time. Come, sit with me.” She lead them to the kitchen and offered them coffee. Eric took the mug from her in hopes the warmth would stop the shaking in his fingers. The liquid jostled in his hands and he took a quick sip to hide his nerves. 

Jack sat, his back straight, face focused. Next to him, Eric knew he looked like a shaky mess. Lardo sat on the other side of the table, completely at peace. 

“You are not the first to come to me.” She told them. “Two came to me first, many years ago. Their love was a terrible one, for while it burned them and brought them together as one, the rest of the world sought their deaths for sin. I do not believe in sin, good, or evil. There is only existence.”

“What happened to them?” Eric asked. “Who are they?”

“They are students here with me. That was part of their deal.” She laughed lightly for a moment. “That and they had to leave their time.”

“Are they happy?”

“Yes. Their love is not without its trials, Eric. No deal will work out in every way perfectly. But, they desired a chance at happiness and that’s what have. In return, I have gained friends.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and showed them a picture of two tall men, one with the warmest grin on his face Eric had ever seen, and another wearing glasses who looked grumpy. “Ransom and Holster. They’re the captains of the ice hockey team.”

“They look wonderful.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Jack asked, impatient. Eric winced.

“Because, Jack, you are not the only one who wants to make a deal today. And I do not make deals lightly.” Lardo showed Eric another picture, this one of the two men eating food, noodles spilling out of their mouths while Lardo laughed in the background. “I’d like you to meet them, someday, Eric. I’m telling you this because I do not make trick deals just to kill you later. I gain something I want from this, or I wouldn’t waste my energy on mortal qualms.”

Eric reached across the table and touched Lardo’s hand. “Thank you.” Part of him saw a place for himself in those pictures. Another part was startled by how human Lardo appeared in them. 

“Of course.” She tucked her phone away and frowned at Jack. “Let’s talk deals then. Are you ready?”

They both nodded. The silence stretched and Eric felt alone for a moment. Time could not touch him in Lardo’s house and it was the first time he had been separated from it. He looked at Jack and saw the haunted look in his eyes, the weight of ages pulling his shoulders down. 

“My deal for you Jack, is that I will remove your immortality and spare you a life of ageless time with an uncertain end. You will die like any mortal and time will cease to be your enemy.” Lardo put her hands flat on the table. “The price is that time will become your jailer and you will lose what you desire most.”

“How can you give me what I desire most and then also take it away?” Jack asked.

Lardo shrugged. “The deal is up to you.” She turned to Eric and continued, “for you, Eric, I offer you happiness. In exchange, you will give to me your time travel and join me for a time.”

Jack’s knuckles were white where they rested on the table. Eric saw the fine tremors running up his arms and he looked down at his own still hands. One of his fingers was bent from an accident where it had broken and set wrong. He wondered how many more years of pain awaited him as he traveled. He wondered how many more friends he would leave and find dead on his return. How strange would the future get after all the time went by?

“I accept your deal, Lardo.” His own voice startled him. “I don’t want to travel anymore and I miss being with my friends instead of watching them fade.”

“You cannot take this back.” Lardo told him, her voice taking on a depth he had never noticed before. “Once gone, your traveling will never return.”

Eric nodded. “I know. And I still accept.”

Lardo’s eyes faded from warm brown to a starry sky full of the glow of life. Ages seemed to swim by and she rose from her seat, the shadows extending behind her. The whole house seemed to warp with her, the emptiness of space enveloping the old wooden walls and the creaking fading into the echoes between galaxies. She reached a hand to Eric and the skin burned away to reveal something Eric couldn’t truly see. 

“Give me your travel, mortal one.” Her voice came out wrong, too deep, too empty, for her still human face. Eric stood and reached out his hand, letting her otherworldly fingers take his. Her, its, skin was cool to the touch and seemed to swirl around his. “Do not be afraid. All will be well.”

Eric saw darkness, the unfathomable distance between him and all else. He was the speck of dust disturbed by those greater than him who walked across the sky. Worlds stretched before him, the possibilities of all that could be extending to the farthest reaches of space. 

It snapped back suddenly, wrenching Eric back into himself. He was in bed, the sun poking through the curtains. 

“Welcome back.” Eric slowly turned his head and saw Lardo sitting on the side of his bed. “You are Eric Bittle, freshman at Samwell University.”

“I remember what happened. Everything.” He croaked at her and she smiled. 

“I know. Your memories were not part of the deal we made and you have a normal life now. Welcome to Samwell. Holster and Ransom are very excited to meet you!”

“I’m glad. But what happened to Jack?”

Lardo took Eric’s hand in hers and held it tightly. “He made his deal, Eric. But his deal cost him far more, for he was too arrogant and selfish to see what he could lose. Things will be hard for a while for you, but I promise he will come around.”

“What does that mean?” He knew he was panicking, he could hear the pitch of his voice, the crack at the end. He couldn’t remember anything after seeing the entity Lardo truly was, her being twisted into something he could only faintly remember before his mind shied away.

“Eric, he doesn’t remember you.”

The world fell away. “What do I do now?” All he had ever known had vanished by touching Lardo’s hand. 

“Your deal was for happiness. And happiness, while it can come from a person, must start from within. You are able to be happy, to be the young person you would’ve been had things been different. Your deal gained you possibility.”

Eric wanted to scream at her that he loved Jack, that what he had had was all he needed. He wanted to claim that he regretted what he had done. Instead, he looked at her in silence, knowing that she was right. He could use the years ahead of him in any way he wanted. His options, his possibilities, were unlimited.

Lardo stood from the bed and looked down on Eric. “This too shall pass. Be patient.”

\--- --- ---

The first time Jack saw him, he was a new student on the hockey team and he was afraid. His hair was like a blaze of gold and Jack, for a moment, thought that an angel had appeared. Big brown eyes looked up with Jack with a childish hope Jack swore he had seen before. 

“I’m Eric.” A hand decorated with slim white scars reached out. “You must be Jack.”

“Yes.” Jack shook Eric’s hand and realized it was trembling. He met the warmth of Eric’s eyes and felt at home. “I’m Jack.”

Eric smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr! -- pricklypaula


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